Back in March, the nine of us here at Toaster got together at the behest of Cub Town's Alex Ciepley to predict the way the 30 major league teams would finish within their divisions and which two teams would take the Wild Cards. Now that we've reached the All-Star Break, the official (if not exactly mathematical) mid-way point of the season, I thought it would be fun to take a look at those predictions with a progress report of sorts.

What I've done is given each of us a score based on the number of games away from our predicted position in the standings each team currently is. For example, I predicted that the Diamondbacks would finish last in the NL West (heh), so I get 10.5 points added to my score because the D-Backs are actually 10.5 games better than the current last-place Rockies. I then get six more points for having the Rockies in fourth because they are six games worse than the current fourth place Giants. For the Wild Cards I used the same system based on the distance between the predicted team and the team currently in the Wild Card lead. The lower the score, the better the predicions (so far). Got it?

Use these links to review our American and National League precitions and comments. Here are the scores:

American League

Toaster	Score
Scott	20.5
Cliff	24.0
Mike	32.5
Alex B	36.0
Alex C	36.5
Jon	36.5
Will	46.5
Ken	49.0
Derek	50.0

National League

Toaster	Score
Ken	41.0
Mike	45.5
Derek	50.5
Alex C	51.0
Will	56.6
Scott	58.0
Alex B	65.0
Cliff	80.0
Jon	91.5

Total

Toaster	Score
Mike	78.0
Scott	78.5
Alex C	87.5
Ken	90.0
Derek	100.5
Alex B	101.0
Will	102.5
Cliff	104.0
Jon	128.0

Here's how those scores break down:

Continue reading...

NL Starting Lineup
C Mike Piazza
1B Derrek Lee
2B Jeff Kent
3B Scott Rolen
SS David Eckstein
OF Bobby Abreu
OF Jim Edmonds
OF Carlos Beltran

AL Starting Lineup
C Jason Varitek
1B Mark Teixeira
2B Brian Roberts
3B Alex Rodriguez
SS Miguel Tejada
OF Manny Ramirez
OF Johnny Damon
OF Vladimir Guerrero
DH David Ortiz

NL Pitchers
Chris Carpenter
Roger Clemens
Chad Cordero
Brian Fuentes
Jason Isringhausen
Brad Lidge
Pedro Martinez
Jake Peavy
Livan Hernandez
John Smoltz
Dontrelle Willis

AL Pitchers
Mark Buehrle
Jon Garland
Bartolo Colon
Roy Halladay
Kenny Rogers
Johan Santana
B.J. Ryan
Joe Nathan
Mariano Rivera
Danys Baez
Justin Duchscherer
Bob Wickman

NL Bench
Paul LoDuca
Aramis Ramirez
Albert Pujols
Luis Castillo
Cesar Izturis
Felipe Lopez
Andruw Jones
Carlos Lee
Luis Gonzalez
Moises Alou
Miguel Cabrera
Jason Bay

AL Bench
Ivan Rodriguez
Paul Konerko
Mike Sweeney
Alfonso Soriano
Michael Young
Melvin Mora
Shea Hillenbrand
Ichiro Suzuki
Garret Anderson
Gary Sheffield

NL Final Roster Spot Ballot
Trevor Hoffman
Brett Myers
Roy Oswalt
Billy Wagner
Brandon Webb

AL Final Roster Spot Ballot
Carl Crawford
Derek Jeter
Torii Hunter
Hideki Matsui
Scott Podsednik

Who do you vote for? Who's deserving, but missing?